Wildlife Rescue Series!

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Originally uploaded by Jane Ray’s Wildlife Rescue Series

Sarah McLachlan loves animals and she’s not afraid to show it. In fact, she has lent her support to both the BC SPCA and the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC in the past, and is about to do so again.

Next week, Sarah will shoot a new television commercial for the SPCA, following on her moving and powerful “Angel” commercial that has been airing over the past couple of years. I’m hoping to be invited to the shoot!

Although it was the Beatles who wrote “Blackbird,” and Paul McCartney who first made the song famous, in my head I always hear it sung in Sarah McLachlan’s voice, and her rendition always turns my thoughts to animals I’ve rescued or helped to heal over the past seven years.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

 Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free…

I’m creating my first board game. I’m getting paid to do this. [insert incredulous laughter here]

The upcoming fall issue of the BC SPCA’s Bark! Magazine, published for the Kids’ Club, will focus primarily on two topics: small dogs (big dogs in small bodies! … and with the same issues and training problems!); and wildlife.

Since it’s fall, we’ve decided to write about bird migration, and that’s when the board game idea came up. Why not make it so the kids could choose to be a bird, and could choose a migration route south across North America, and then roll the dice, choose a card, and see who gets to their destination first!

Playing cards will have all kinds of obstacles on them: storms, skyscrapers and predators, for example. But they’ll also have boons: warm updrafts, flying in V-formation to save energy, catching a tailwind, finding an abundant food source.

The cards will be downloadable from the Kids’ Club website, which will also feature a Google map of the full route, complete with specially chosen clickable sites, such as a pass through the Rockies; Reifel Bird Sanctuary; the staging ground at Boundary Bay.

Did I mention I’m getting paid to do this “work?”

Life is good.

Stay tuned for more info about the upcoming issue of Bark!